


Loose lips sink ships

by Anemonenfisch



Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel
Genre: Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Possibly Pre-Slash, and these boys have some toxic masculinity to work through, because I enjoyed the character development in book 4, because I read these books in german and he calls Frey there completly different endearments, because this is still England in the 19th century, but haven't made my way through book 5 yet, but instead we get "almost" handholding, now watch me fail at giving McGray the right accent, probably plays after book 5, well mostly Ian, which is one of my favourite tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29789499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemonenfisch/pseuds/Anemonenfisch
Summary: "Don't call me Percy, you sound like my father", I said. "Fucking hell, Percy it's not thee right moment to get your daddy issues out!"In which Frey is shot, and they talk. Well, mostly Ian does the talking. And the bleeding out. It's a fun time for everyone involved.
Relationships: Ian Frey & Adolphus "Nine-Nails" McGray
Kudos: 7





	Loose lips sink ships

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this humble fic, which I wrote while ignoring my school work. And the next book, still haven't read that one.

"Don't call me Percy, you sound like my father", I said. "Fucking hell, Percy it's not thee right moment to get your daddy issues out!" McGray snarled at me, returning from the fruitless adventure of chasing our suspect. I groaned, trying to push myself upwards into a more comfortable position, this venture was immediately stopped by two very rude Scottish hands.

"Don't move, stupid", McGrey said, pressing his absolutely hideous jacket on my abdomen. My time at the medical school had been brief, but I had a growing suspicion that our suspect had managed to hit me somewhere quite unfortunate. "Oh dear", I muttered, not liking how faint my voice sounded. "Don't look, I can't have ye faint on me by that little blood of yours." Despite his harsh voice, Nine-nails hands were almost gentle. "Just stay still, the boys are getting Reed as quick as possible. Let's hope he forgave you enough to fix you up." 

To be truthful, it wasn't the first time that someone managed to draw blood from me. McGray himself managed that quite a few times. It was just the first time I found myself shot in one of the god-forsaken corners of Edinburgh. "I don't faint at the sight of blood", I said but decided not to inspect my wound any closer. The jacket told me enough, how tightly McGrey had bundled it up to increase the pressure on the wound, the crease between my partners' eyebrows. It wasn't looking so good apparently. Not that I thought McGrey knew enough about surgery to determine the real state of my body, but the man had probably seen enough bodies with similar wounds to give him some experience in this area.

He hummed. 

I thought he wasn't taking me seriously. "I didn't leave the medical field because I couldn't see blood Nine-nails. I'm a police officer, that would be ridiculous!" "Sure, Frey, sure", McGrey didn't sound convinced. He didn't even sound like he listened to me at all. Which bothered me quite honestly. I was used to being ignored by this Scot especially, but maybe it was the blood making me feel lightheaded, or the fact that I couldn't do anything besides talking and I never mixed well with helplessness, but I gripped the sleeve of the shirt that had looked surprisingly fine for something out of McGreys closet and tugged at it.

"I didn't quit medical school because I can't see blood", I said again, trying hard to put as much distaste as I could into my words. "Don't get your panties into a twist Percy, just lay still for a goddamn second. You're making this harder for both of us", McGrey gave me a look that bordered on pitiful. "You want to know why I left?" McGrey opened his mouth, probably to tell me to shut up, but I was the one bleeding out, so I had some right to be a bit out of my mind. "The first autopsy we did was of a young woman. And when the professor cut her open she was ..." I felt a lump growing in my throat. It was not one of my proudest moments, the way my knees had started to shake when I realised what was laying there before me. The woman had been bad, quite honestly, but I wasn't going to confess that, no matter how much blood was going to flow out of my body. 

I might have passed out there for a second because McGrey had wrapped one of his hands around my wrist the next moment I came to consciousness. "What was it?", he asked, his voice almost soothering. "What was what?" I asked, trying to get through the thick fog that had started to disperse in my thoughts. "The woman in your medical school, what was about her? Was she a long lost lover? Had she a third nipple?" "You're are so gross", I squeezed out, lifting my hand that was still twisted in the fabric of the sleeve, trying to hit McGrey but realising that I couldn't quite move my muscles anymore. There was something cold settling itself in my chest. 

"Oh", suddenly I realised how weak I felt. And cold. "The woman", McGrey asked again, his voice almost sounding impatient. He looked at me, squeezed his fingers around my wrist almost so tight that it hurt. "She was pregnant", I said, focusing my eyes on McGrey again. "Probably died shortly before giving birth. It was so ..." alive. That's what had punched the air out of me. How tiny the hands had looked. "Kids are always hard", he had turned to rub circles into my skin, something that told me that I probably wasn't looking so good. 

Nine-nails, trying to comfort me. The situation was quite absurd, all things considered. "It wasn't just that. Everyone was so ... excited. The professor told us how lucky we were. After that, I knew I didn't have it in me to carry on." I felt light-headed, almost like floating. "That's why I'm not a doctor." "Ye probably would have made a shitty doctor Percy, ye handwriting way to neat." 

I tried to laugh but the heavy feeling on my chest prevented me from getting more out than a strangled wheeze. "Easy dear, don't strain yourself too much." "You sound so much like my father right now", I smiled at McGrey, who looked like he couldn't quite decide if strangeling me was still an option. "Also hold your hand while dying? Family more fucked up then ye have told me?" 

"I never told you much about my family", not that there was much to talk about. "Elgie told me a bit about them. Ye face most of the time tells me enough." "You and my brother talked behind my back? I feel left out." "He was a bit less stuck up than me, actually seemed to like it here", the cold was spreading from my chest downwards, but my head felt more like I was coming down with a fever. All in all the whole experience wasn't the best nor recommendable. 

"I like it here. Most of the time. It's not as bad as father always made it sound." "Regarding how you talk about your family most of the time, I'm surprised you listened to any advice of ye old man." McGray's hand was distractingly warm around my icy skin and I felt myself leaning into the touch. I remembered reading about bloodloss way before even starting medical school. It had probably been one of Laurence's books, back when I had tried to be as much as my brother as possible. "I mean, you stole Joan from me." "Believe me, I would give her back to you if it didn't mean that my man would give me a hard time for as long as I live. She will surely give me an earful after hearing about this whole thing." 

"Yeah she will", I couldn't help but smile at the thought. "She almost made me quit my work back in London one time. It wasn't even the one where the suspect tried to poison me though." "Mhm, you just had such a great life before coming here I see." "And also, this had been a clear attempt on my life, so you will be able to charge him with sustainable evidence. There's no way he will manage to wiggle out of this." "I would have prefered if you didn't have to be shot to do that. We had him." "Sure, you're where about to arrest him on the assumption that he did witchcraft", I felt a strange relief washing over me. We still bickered, even here, even now. "Don't try arguing with me now. Just tell me about ye damn family if it makes you happy." McGrey looks at me, his face strangely soft. "I heard rambling is good for ye health." 

"My family is great", I mumbled, angling my body towards him because I felt cold, bone-chilling cold, colder than on the fateful trip to Lancashire. "They are just a bit ...", I tried to encapsulate the feeling I always had when trying to talk about my family. "I don't hate them." "Ey lad, sure thing." There was a stretch of silence between us. "Elgie is great." "Ay." "Laurence is probably going to get enough problems with Eugenia. Father and Catherine are, well they are themselves." "Just you're typically British aristocratic family dynasty I see." "Don't get on such a high horse, you were practically royalty yourself Nine-nails", I said, drawing a dry chuckle from my partner. "Promise me that you will get me a closed casket alright?" The fingers rubbing on circles on my wrist didn't stop, they rather started to draw them even faster, almost as if McGrey was trying to keep his blood warm all by himself. 

"Don't start talking about that now Percy, you're not going to need a casket in a very long time." "Listen McGrey", I said, trying to catch his eye. "You and I both know how dying men look like, and I personally feel like one more and more. So let me do the grown-up thing and tell you, get me a closed casket and for the love of God, don't let Elgie see me." I couldn't stomach the thought of my brother having to see me like this. "I don't want him to remember me like that. He's still so young." "He's way more resilient than you give him credit for", McGrey looks at him, sad smile tugged into the corners of his mouth. 

I thought about my father saying something similar, back when we buried mother. Back then I had been told to swallow my tears and they had settled in my stomach until I threw up in my room after the ceremony. "I know, it doesn't mean that he has to. Just, please." "Alright, alright, if you one day tragically leave this world, I will get ye a fancy, closed casket." 

"I think I'm going to die now", the words hung heavy between us, mixed with the scent of blood and my shallow breathing. Which got harder. Every drag of oxygen into my lungs felt like an uphill battle, one I was going to start losing quite soon. "No, you're not going to die", McGray threw a look towards the door, an anxious look in his eyes. Denial didn't suit him well, I never liked it when we argued about the supernatural and I didn't like it now. "I think I might. Don't argue with me." McGray turned his head around, looking at me. There is a stubborn edge to his face, a deep frown at the edge of his lips. He's afraid, my fogged up told me. He's afraid and you're supposed to say something and I wanted to, because for all the times we where at each other's throats, because for all the times I wanted to burn his stupid burns to ashes, for all the times he was driving me crazy, McGray had somehow made himself at home in my life in a way no person had in quite some time. 

I knew what his sister did to him. And I wanted to tell him that this wasn't his fault, that I would be okay but my tongue felt heavy and my mind was getting more and more uncooperative by the second. "Ye can't die, Percy, alright? What am I suppose to do when ye do? I can't get crazier than I am already." McGray wasn't afraid often. I could count the times he had sounded uneasy on my hands. Fear was something he couldn't afford often, because of his family, because of his work and especially because of the things he was looking for most of the time. He sounded afraid now. His accent was even thicker than normally. He sounded young and soft and utterly vulnerable. Something in my mind recoiled at the thought that I made him like this. "You're going to be okay", I wanted to say, and probably said more or less, but the words came out slurred and blurred together and then I couldn't form words anymore, barely managed to keep my eyes open and McGray's hand around my wrist felt like the last thing anchoring me to this world. He didn't let go.

When Dr Reed arrived, I was barely conscious, and to be honest, I don't remember much about it. I remember a lot of loud voices, about McGray's hand not leaving my wrist. And then Dr Reed took pity on me and knocked me out with morphine.

When I woke up, alive, hurt and with a terrible taste in my mouth, McGray had seated himself into the probably most uncomfortable looking chair in the whole of Edinburgh and was flipping through a leather-bound book. We were in the hospital, a little, dirty room and the bleary winter sun shone through one of the sad little window. His eyes shot up the moment I got myself sorted out enough to realise where I was and how I got here. "Aye, sleeping beauty done for now?", he asked, his lips twisted into a sharp, hurt smile. 

There were new lines in his face, or maybe I was imagining things. I wasn't making up the quite anger that was radiating from him. "I feel awful", I said, my voice feeling rough and unused. "Ye got shot, people tend to not feel good after that." The quite anger was something new, something I didn't know where to put. McGray was angry plenty of times, but his anger was an explosive thing, quickly reaching the boiling point, blasting everything standing too closely. 

This anger felt more like my fathers, the quite, resentful blanket that sometimes settled over him and suffocated everything around him. "Did we get him?", I asked. "Yes, bastard didn't even make it to the woods, McNair caught him", McGray took his time straightening the page in his book, which was probably a Grimoire or something equally weird, before closing it with a thump that was unnaturally loud in the room. He wore different clothes, I noticed. Still hideous, still looking like he dug them out of a pile of rags, but suspiciously lacking any bloodstains. I wondered if Joan had made a scene when McGray came back to the house. 

McGray placed the book carefully in his lap, before fixing me with an icy stare. Maybe it was the quite honestly poor lighting in the room or the morphine that was still coursing through my veins, but his eyes were like splinters of ice. I felt like I was eight again, standing before my father in his study and trying hard to not look him in the face while he waited for me to explain my failing grades. It had been a few months after mothers death and neither he nor I knew how to deal with it back then, so he had just kept silently staring at me until I worked up the courage to stumble through my apology and vow to do better in the future without vomiting on his carpet. I might be going to vomit this time around, but at least I could blame this on the sedatives. 

"Gosh P- Frey, never do something as stupid as that ever again, alright?", McGray sighed, leaning forward, wrapping his hand around my wrist again and squeezing it almost gently. "Like, fuck", he was still looking at my face, and I was pretty sure that I didn't imagine the new lines, there was a certain wariness in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "Ye scared me there for quite some time." I was, quite honestly, a bit at loss there. I expected screaming, maybe some insults, and I wouldn't have held it against him. I had expected to wake up alone, to get a few days off and then to return to our dirt hole and to never speak of this event ever again. Instead, McGray was here, radiating a wave of calm anger that had apparently nothing to do with me and was looking at me quite intensely. 

"I can't promise anything", I replied to the unspoken demand between us. Our line of work was dangerous and quite frankly dying in the line of duty had always been a more or less prominent thought in the back of my head. "I know lassie, doesn't make it easier for me", he smiled when seeing me scrunch my nose up at the endearment. For a moment I thought he was going to say more, or worse, trying to hug me or something equally uncivilized. Maybe my discomfort had shone on my face or maybe McGray was uncharacteristically sensitive about my feelings today, but he didn't to either, instead rubbing small circles over my pulse point. And it definitely was the drugs that made me settle back and watching the ice in his eyes melt


End file.
